TIGO optimizers worth it? - 3 Seasons in and it's a yes from me

[Baz000000]

I was a complete solar power novice when I did my 8kwh two 2 axis tracker install through the Spring of 2024 to when it went live in July 2024. The situation made me consider optimizers as the trackers are located in an old sparsely populated orchard so there is always going to be varying levels of shading at different times off the day. The TS4 optimizers and CCA monitoring equipment represented around 8% of the total DIY build and install cost, that would have been substantially lower if I'd paid for the instal.

Typical Solar reclaim %, Note that although the % varies dramatically the actual kwh of reclaimed energy is very similar at around 40kwh/month for our site.

Mid-Summer 8% of daily output
Autumn/Fall 20% of daily output
Mid-Winter 35% of daily output

During the low sun, long shadow winter months when daylight hours and sunshine hours are few the reclaimed input is an essential element to enabling our non grid tied system to be self sufficient with sufficient power to run the inverter, trackers and battery cabinet heater and still provide some power to the house load. We have the option to either house load from solar or from the grid.

In Summer 92% of house load was served by solar
In Autumn/fall 48% of house load was served by solar
In Winter 12% of house load was served by solar

Without optimizers then essentially all power production in Winter would be consumed by the solar installation with nothing available to direct onto house load. I estimate that the payback period on the optimizers is only 4 years.

 

[Solar Guppy]

Nothing in your post explains how you determined there was actual improvement in solar harvest?

Now if you have one array with and one without, that would be helpful information.

 

[Baz000000]

Nothing in your post explains how you determined there was actual improvement in solar harvest?

Now if you have one array with and one without, that would be helpful information.

The TIGO CCA allows you to monitor the individual panel yield and also displays how much reclaimed energy there has been by minimising the shading impact across a string.

 

[Solar Guppy]

That is just feel good info from Tigo, which doesn't know what the power harvest would be without the "optimizer" feature.

Everything I have seen from side by side testing as well as a local system shows negligible improvements which the cost of the system will never be recovered from harvest improvements.

String solar inverter's and the panels bypass diodes work quite as well, make the actual improvements indistinguishable to environmental variations when side by side testing is done.

 

[bhbaker220]

It seems like it would be pretty easy for Tigo to employ a technique to turn off the optimization feature and just let the diodes do the work. I suspect they have done this in house but hated the results and shredded all evidence that this was ever done.

 

[Baz000000]

That is just feel good info from Tigo, which doesn't know what the power harvest would be without the "optimizer" feature.

Each panel output is individually monitored, measured and reported/recorded. So, I'd assume TIGO has the data to be able to work out how the power output on a string in being modulated. Today, some lower panels have yielded only 20% of the top output from higher up panels which are less affected by shading.

 

[Solar Guppy]

Each panel output is individually monitored, measured and reported/recorded. So, I'd assume TIGO has the data to be able to work out how the power output on a string in being modulated. Today, some lower panels have yielded only 20% of the top output from higher up panels which are less affected by shading.

Tigo's are completely redundant to a quality string inverter, both do the same thing which is track for a maximum power point.

Almost all name brand inverters these days have multi hump ( vmp ) tracking, older ( like when Tigo came out with these devices 10+ years ago ) did have issues with partial shading.

If your happy, be happy but there is no magic to shade effects on solar.

 

[SeaGal]

Solis inverters work very well with shade across panels using their MPPT tracking algorithms - see when one of our 4 strings had gradual shade across the panels in late pm in the graphs in these two postings...

Post in thread 'Disappointed with Tigo optimisers'

Aug 2, 2024

I agree that I don't think optimisers are as good as they claim to be. I was pondering getting some for my newly installed extra string, but decided against it after seeing some of Martyna's tests.

Co-incidentally I also have Trina Vertex S+ 440w - 9 of them on one string of a Solis inverter and also have some shade (to be removed!) that tracks across the panels from late afternoon. Yesterday afternoon was full sunshine and the reduction of output we got was generally linear, as you expected for yours. This is just relying on the panel's bypass diodes doing their job. See graph...

• SeaGal

Post in thread 'Disappointed with Tigo optimisers'

Aug 9, 2024

It looks like the second one really started to make a difference, right before you turned it off again. You were putting out 900W right before the 3rd cut off.

- you can see on the graph where string voltage reduced at that point too.

It's really hard to say what's the cause... the optimizers or the MPPT itself, or their interaction. Is there a way to turn off the optimizer function?

And no, can't turn off the optimisers

As we both suggested before, disconnecting the optimisers would be the best way to determine the root cause, even if that means getting...

• SeaGal